Sunday, 31 December 2017

In this blog we want to collect poems (and short prose pieces) written by queer people (mostly men) in reaction to hookup apps (and websites), the likes of Grindr, Scruff, Daddyhunt, GuySpy, GROWLr, Mister X, Hornet, Randy, Gaydar, GayRomeo, Buttheads, Manhunt, Gay.com... and any other app or site that you know but I may have missed. Multimedia material (e.g. visual art, sound, ...) is also welcome . If you have any piece on the topic, would you like to share it with us? If you don't, would you like to write one and contribute it to this website? To submit a piece, email: ernesto@sarezale.comCopyright of each piece remains with its author.These are the contributions so far:

Wednesday, 15 November 2017

One morning, still drunk, cranked up on caffeine, basking in a post-fuck glow, you will proudly text your friend declaring you’ve just had sex with a guy who’s never been with anyone with a vagina before. Someone off Grindr. You will feel you’ve achieved. You will feel like a pioneering presence in a land of dick pics and hairy torsos. You’re not like other men, but you’re still a man, and your ability to pick up men on the gayest of apps proves it.That afternoon the hangover will set in and you will ask yourself if the events of last night were really that great. You will recall the anxious, self-deprecating questions you asked your hook-up, seeking to pre-empt any doubts or disappointment your body may provide: ‘Do I look how you expected me to look? Did you expect me to be more masculine? Have you ever had sex with anyone with a vagina before? We don’t have to fuck like that.’ How when he first took your binder off you looked down at your chest embarrassed. How, naked and lying skin on skin, you couldn’t help but feel your body as feminised next to his, how the thought kept running through your head, but he likes men, what does he want with me? How, between fucks, on his bed, swigging cheap white wine, he asked you what your name was ‘before’ and probably this was just natural human curiosity, but what if it was because you were unconvincing as a man? How he’d asked what kind of girl you’d been, if you ever had long hair, if he could see a picture of you ‘as a woman’. You’d got out your phone and showed him a picture taken at a drag night you’d gone to the other month as a garish queen named ‘Victoria Peckham’ and he didn’t even see the funny side. ‘No. I meant before.’ Then he saw you were getting uncomfortable and assured you he didn’t have a fetish. But it’s not like you were there for his personality. Maybe he was your fetish. Once the hangover lifts you will shrug off all the awkward stuff with Morrissey lyrics: ‘Why ponder life’s complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat?’ But you will know that, even before the stupid drunken lack of protection, before the confused, horrified looks on the faces of the pharmacists at your attempt to explain why someone who looks like you needs the morning after pill, before the lonely trek to the sexual health clinic where the nurse has to call another nurse who phones a hostile-seeming doctor to work out what to do with you, before the four week course of PEP, before any of that, life’s complexities already get in the way. You will know all this but you will continue to jizz on the passenger seat nonetheless. That night you will go to bed, thinking of the way his cum hit your stomach in the early hours, wrapped in the arms of your girlfriend who just wouldn’t understand.

Monday, 25 September 2017

In the cotton-white 58th hall of the National Gallery, a wide rectangular frame surrounding a scene of Satyrs tearing each other apart while soaked up in drunkenness. I ask if this resembles in any way a typical English pub. After a fortuitous change of subject, I find out you like big dogs and you’ve got one brother or maybe two, you’re quite fond of Games of Thrones. You carry with pride your Southampton scruffiness. On a day when January’s frost clings firmly to the streets of Streatham Hill you take the chance to show me the house. Your single bed appears to be rickety, noisy and too tight for the both of us. You enquire about the possibility of watching while other men mess me around. You lurk inside and leave your scented trail but without asking. You’re leaving for Egypt in few days and that will be the last I will ever see of you. It’s a long embarrassing wait before your Scottish flatmate terminates his shower.

Monday, 18 September 2017

Titles: "Homo On The Rocks", "Anonymous at 6am", "You Only Send Kisses When You’re Horny", "NSFW".

Homo On The Rocks

I'm at a house party
playing catch up, starting to feel the effects of a few cocktails,
and I set sail back to the bar
I'm stood looking over the booze trying to choose
When this guy next to me says
"Oi mate, you don't want that drink, that's a gay drink"
Now I've had a few sherries and I'm feeling pretty merry
Perhaps a touch more unsteady than I'd care to admit,
but I'm reckon I can still hit this motherfucker if it comes to it
"A gay drink?!"
I reply, manic twitch in my eye
and I see the guys face drop
And before anyone can stop me, I say
"Do you know exactly who you're talking too?
I'm Grindr’s finest
the only cocksucker in the room
and for you to assume that my choice of drink in any way reflects my sexuality
is a travesty!
It's 2017
Where have you been? And what have you done?
And what can I do to help you overcome this belief that gay means bad or
inferior in any way?
It's sad really”
He apologises for any offense
and I spend the next twenty minutes furiously texting my friends
In the morning, he may not remember
Liquor loosens lips

but I hope before the next
time he opens his mouth he thinks

===

Anonymous at
6am

Hey guy,

Just to clarify

Never have I ever given
the impression

Or mentioned, that I would
be A-OK with a 6AM message to say

That I am invited round
for fun! And I should totally come

I yawn, as you offer arse
crack at the crack of dawn

and I’m forlorn at your
approach

Encroaching closer and
closer to the creepy

I’m still sleepy, I don’t
need this, and yet still you persist

No I don’t know who you
are

I didn’t fix your sisters
car

Nor do I work at buttery
reservoir

You have me mistaken

I haven’t taken you out
for a drink before

I’m not that guy you think
you saw

No, honestly? I’m not sure
what I’m looking for

But I’m guessing it’s not
you

And you’re continuously
pressing the send key

Bombarding me and I’m
still politely saying no

Your persistence isn’t
flattering

Nor is the smattering of
faceless nudes included in your flirtatious texts

To quickly lower the tone, I wrote this on my
phone and quiff came out as stiff

Which is a very different poem…

I keep meeting guys at events and becoming
hell bent, trying to work out where I know them from

Every answer in my head seems wrong, when all of
a sudden I get this hideous reminder

“Oh
yeah, now I remember you, I’ve seen your cock on Grindr”

That’s normally where the conversation ends,

And my friends seem to part like the red sea

And no one really talks to me

Or even looks at me

So I quickly leave the kiki…

Taxi!

===

Dan Webber

Dan has been involved in the East Midlands arts scene for the last 14 years and is a respected actor, writer, producer and director. Through spoken word he hopes to change this.

He has appeared at YNOT Festival, Derby Comedy Festival, Bearded Theory Festival, Queer As Jokes, London and Incite at The Phoenix Artists Club, London.

He was a finalist in the Poetry is Dead Good Mix It Up Midlands Slam in 2014, in October 2016 he was named BBC Local Poet for Derby for National Poetry Day and in July 2017 he was commissioned to write a poem for The Cathedral Quarter, Derby winner of Best City Location at The UK High Street of the Year Awards.

Wednesday, 11 January 2017

He
put me off when he wrote: “You are a great guy. But you shouldn’t use the
headphones you have on your pic.” “Why?” “Because they’re pink!” I almost
blocked him. But I counted to 10. Such hot guy would not normally want to hook
up with me. I typed in a hurry “if you don’t want to meet…” He replied in an
dash: “I do want to meet”. And we met. But it was not easy. First he said he
could not accommodate. I typed: “I can’t at my flat ‘cause I live with my
parents. If we meet, we have to have sex on a couch at my uncle’s unfurnished
flat.” So he soon changed his tune and he said he could host. When I got to his
place, he was shifty: “You know, my flat was untidy.” But that’s not the only
thing that annoyed me about him. Half way through, when he was about to give me
a blow-job, he stopped and he asked: “Are you clean?” I wondered when was the
last time I had had a shower. Did my willy smell? He explained: “Are you tested?” I got what he
meant. “Yes,” I said. Which is true. It was six months ago. But I didn’t tell
him when because he didn’t ask. I almost lost my erection. Gladly, his sucking
was ace. I was soon stiff and ready. When I came, he came shortly after me. And
he annoyed me again. He sprawled on his bed, breathing deep. “I feel so
relaxed,” he said without looking at me, “it feels so good!”. He overdid it,
rapt in his own satisfaction, he was almost falling asleep. So thoughtless.

PAUSE.

It
was sweet, must be said, that he never compelled me to remove my shirt. He said
nothing the moment his hands touched the
body-shaping vest I was wearing beneath. I had put on weight over Christmas and
was feeling self-conscious about the width of my waist. It’s good that he did
not see me with my top off because body-shapers are made for white people and
look very awkward on my dark skin tone. It would have been hard to get rid of
that corset anyway. He was happy to simply strip me off my pants. He wasn’t all
bad. I loved how he stroked my face stubble with his thumb. And when I asked
him, post-coitus, “what’s that thing over there?” he stretched and jumped out
of bed. He showed me with pride an award
he had won as a student back home. He looked back at me. He got close. He
crouched and kissed my soft cock. I warned him: “It will get hard again…”
“That’s OK,” he replied. And I was reminded of how, earlier on, in the thralls
of passion, when almost against my will I shouted “Daddy!”, he looked at my
eyes, put his ear on my chest and said: “Your heartbeat sounds just like the
overture of Rigoletto”.

Sunday, 8 January 2017

A trill rises from the murky pits of my computer’s audio system, with the same indiscretion through which trees tickle a scorned window. The trill is familiar, heard it lots of times, once turned my head, Planetromeo’s blue website winks at me, cheeky.I took as a sign the two times I tried to install Grindr in my phone, the app crashing both times, therefore never really used it.Planetromeo doesn’t crash. Planetromeo is an old faithful friend.The pc window whistles out another window which whistles out your message, an intriguing summary of our first meeting. Your ass has made a very good first impression.Few things count more than a good first impression.We decide to meet and I pour myself in the cold streets,Mouth steaming, heading to your studio flat in Hackney.Upon discovering I would mark you, that my jawswere thirsty for bruising, my lips willing to suckle and scathe you showcased delight on your face like an expensive watch from a Selfridges’ display.We undress each other in a rush, the rush mellows.You hold my head still, implore my lips to stop,Cause you might come already.Turning me over you push me down, my nose sinking in the pillow, my nostrils filled with linen, ignoring the stink of ratpiss.You lift my snow-white bum cheeks, Face my narrow opening which mirrors the loneliness of both.Not long after we start, I beg you to dig deeper and harder and faster inside meYet what I really mean is I would like youto hold me tight and kiss me sweetly and never let me go,but I don’t translate feelings well, they are a languageI’ve never really learnt to speak.We grow incandescent, and once you let your river flow down to the wrinkles of my navel, we grow apart.You came three times in a row and I didn’t even notice.On my way out, I melt with the fog, I fold one of my sleevesIn a naughty shape. The Overground’s card reader beeps me welcome.Somehow, a weird feeling remains, All the windows I encounter looking down at meAre dressed up in a smirk.